Phil I believe there will be a cultural shift taking place in the not so distant future. Continuous testing and delivery rely on automated idempotent processes. The processes should not take dependencies on a particular OS or user interface. It would be quite refreshing to integrate modules with custom code to facilitate delivery. Think of all the time that would be saved running processes that yielded the same results no matter how many times they were executed.

Knowledgeable DBA's and those willing to learn orchestration best practices will find themselves in high demand as Microsoft pushes for less of a reliance on the DBA. Good DB professionals make excellent candidates for roles that deal with continuous testing and delivery. The thought processes that have served them well throughout their careers match up quite well with the demands of roles that deal with continuous testing and delivery.

I've never done powershell. But know dos batch files inside and out anymore. I've used them to setup a full monitoring system on our hosted systems that provide a daily check in for all the servers. I also setup a weekly backup system that use 7-Zip to backup non SQL DBs and application data. It reports to a entral server and then I built a daily Access DB run that consolidates the info and sends daily e-mails for all the servers.

My prior position I was able to use similar install scripts to automate client upgrade installs as well. So I'm not a strict "I'm a DBA only" person. Someday I guess I will have to to learn powershell. But using DOS batch files can get you to the 90% level if you have a clue.

@JimIf you are good at DOS commands, then you'll be a natural in PowerShell. It is almost backward-compatible but not quite. Yes, I've done many years of DOS shell processes, and when PowerShell came along, I just thought, 'this will make it all easier!'. It did.

I also think that the more that is done in a scripting language the more of a library of scripts is built up both in-house as well as popular ones shared online. With PowerShell's functions, modules and script importing, I should imagine that the more you use scripting the less script you need to write.

Also, I can imagine GUI front ends being developed for PowerShell much like they do for WiX using Votive.